The United Nations Popuplation Fund (UNFPA) on Friday advised Ghana to endeavour to cover at least all categories of vulnerable women and girls especially head porters in the 2020 population and housing census.
According to the Deputy Resident Representative of the UNFPA, Erica Goldson said until the census covered the homeless, outdoor sleepers, and head porters, Ghana would lack a reliable data to provide services and fight gender inequalities.
She was interacting with media fellows attending the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data Press Fellowship (GPSDD) to Ghana.
Eight Journalists from Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, United States and United Kingdom are currently in the country for the four-day Data4SDGs Press fellowship underway in Accra.
The GPSDD is sponsoring the fellows attending the programme, being organised in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
Mrs Goldson said the UNFPA was interested in the utilization of the census data to inform national policy formulation and implementation.
She said the UNFPA was determined to support head porters and other vulnerable women and girls to go into decent socio economic livelihoods and even enroll interested victims into school but it could do that and strengthen it if the country had reliable data on them.
Mrs Araba Forson, the Deputy Government Statistician in charge of operation at the GSS, said the 2020 census would use electronic mappings and satellite images to capture data.
She said the government was spending US 84 million dollars on the census and the GSS would ensure that it covered every Ghanaian including new born babies, the sick and the ages indoor, and all vulnerable people.
Government spent US54 million dollars in the 2010 population and housing census, she said.
Mrs Forson said the GSS would engage about 60, 000 personnel on contract for exercise which would last for about three weeks.
The Chief Executive Officer of the GPSDD, lauded the Ghana Government for her commitment to improving on data collection and commended the GSS for it’s wonderful work.
The GPSDD was established in 2015 to support and promote the use of data to achieve the United Nations SDGs.
